Blue Light

If you had taken a walk on a particularly remote strip of beach in the Gangneung region of South Korea on an early winter’s night, you might have walked past two men standing in the wet sand, just beyond the reach of the waves.

You might have stared – might even have stopped, for a while – because they’re both beautiful and not in an ordinary way. You might even have wondered whether they were brothers, because they are alike in their gaze and the way they hold themselves, before your eyes inevitably fell to their linked fingers and you think ah! with a shade of embarrassment. It’s clearly a private moment that you’ve intruded upon.

You’d have walked past, slower than your usual gait, because there’s something magnetic about these strange men. At some point, you would have been unable to resist the temptation to take another look, and so you would have turned, to see them walking in the opposite direction. You would have seen the guy with the blonde hair, who’s slightly shorter, try to link arms with the other, who shakes him off impatiently. In the distance, you would have heard him complaining “Yah, it’s hard enough to walk in this sand, are you trying to make me trip?” You would have heard a responding laugh, and, if you listened very, very carefully, you would have heard a soft, airy voice say “I won’t let you fall, hyung.”

Smiling, you would have looked up to see the full, brilliant moon shining down on you – and them too.